Consciousness returned. Not a gentle dawn. A violent shove back into reality.
The first thing he felt was the cold, damp grit of cobblestones on his cheek. The first thing he slled was the sour stench of refuse and stale rainwater.
The first thing he heard was the distant echo of screams. A city in a nightmare.
He pushed himself up. His body scread in protest. Every muscle ached. He groaned. His hand went to his chest. He expected a gaping, bloody hole.
His fingers t only the coarse fabric of his uniform. Beneath it, smooth, unbroken skin.
He froze.
He patted his chest again, more frantically. Nothing. No wound. No blood. Not even a tear in the cloth.
Impossible. He rembered the blinding pain. The feeling of his life pouring out. He rembered dying.
’Maybe I’m a ghost,’ he thought. The idea was a strange, clinical detachnt. ’That would be inconvenient.’
He looked at his hands. They seed solid. He flexed his fingers. He was alive. Sohow.
That was when his vision flickered.
A shimring, semi-transparent blue screen appeared in his field of view. It was filled with text and bars. Like sothing from a video ga.
[Edward Ross]
[Class received: Void Eater]
[Class description:] The Void Eater is a predator of souls, an anomaly born from the edge of oblivion. A servant to the endless hunger, walking the line between existence and nothingness. He carries the void within, but his void... accepts no other essence. He serves the hunger that consus all things.
Level: 1
HP: 100/100
MP: 50/50
SP: 0
[Stats]
STR: 5
VIT: 5
DEX: 5
INT: 5
WIS: 5
LCK: ?
[Innate Talent activated: Soul Devourer]
[Talent description:] Soul Devourer: The hunger of the void made manifest. This power can forcibly extract the soul essence of any living being. Those whose souls are devoured are erased from existence, their bodies turning to dust.
[Skill activated: Consu]
[Skill description:] Consu: Reach out and feast upon the essence of the fallen or the weak. Instantly absorbs the soul of a dying or incapacitated target. Converts soul essence into Soul Points (SP).
Edward stared. His mind refused to process it. He blinked hard. A dying man’s hallucination. He closed and opened his eyes, it was still there.
The screen was still there.
"Okay," he muttered to the empty alley. "So, not a ghost. Just insane. That’s a relief."
He tried to wave his hand through it. No resistance. The screen was an illusion. A projection onto his sight.
HP and MP were self-explanatory. Stats seed... average. Pathetically so. But the most glaring parts were the question marks next to his Luck.
A twitch of movent at his feet drew his attention.
A goblin. The last survivor. Lying in a heap of its own filth. Its leg was broken at a grueso angle. It was dying. Its breath ca in ragged, wheezing gasps.
The mont his eyes locked onto the pathetic creature, a new sensation washed over him.
Not pity. Not disgust.
Hunger.
It was unlike any hunger he had ever known. Not the familiar ache in his stomach. This was a deeper, more primal craving. A cavernous emptiness in the core of his soul. A cold, demanding, and utterly alien need.
His body moved before his mind could object. His hand, guided by an instinct he didn’t know he possessed, reached out. His rational mind scread at him to stop. To pull back. But the hunger was a roaring tide. His reason was a grain of sand.
His fingertips brushed against the goblin’s sickly green skin.
The world seed to lurch.
A torrent of cold energy, like a river of ice, flooded up his arm. Straight into the gnawing void in his soul. The goblin let out a final, silent scream. Its body convulsed.
Edward watched in mute horror. The creature’s flesh began to desiccate. To crumble away like ancient parchnt. Its skin tightened over its bones. Then turned grey and brittle.
In seconds, the entire goblin dissolved into a pile of fine, black dust.
Where the goblin had been, a single, shimring point of blue light hovered. Then it zipped into his chest.
The hunger vanished. Replaced by a strange, unsettling satisfaction.
And on the holographic screen, a number changed.
SP: 5
’Soul Points,’ he realized. The words dropped into his mind with cold certainty.
He stared at his hand. Covered in black dust. He had just... eaten a soul. Devoured a living creature’s essence. The horror of the act warred with the intoxicating surge of power.
It was vile. It was monstrous.
And a tiny, treacherous part of him whispered that it had felt good.
Before he could grapple with his new existence, the blue screen flashed. A new ssage.
`[System Quest Issued: Reach Level 2 in 1 hour.]`
`[Reward: 1 All Stats]`
`[Failure Penalty: Punishnt Protocol Activation]`
Edward read the ssage twice. "Reach Level 2?" he said aloud. "In an hour? With what? I don’t have a weapon. I don’t even have a class. Am I supposed to go around touching monsters to death?"
The thought was absurd. The city was in chaos. A Rankless nobody like him trying to fight monsters was suicide. The quest was impossible. A setup.
He looked at the tir in the corner of his vision: `59:58`.
He didn’t move. He stood in the alley. A silent observer to his own ludicrous fate. He watched the tir tick down. Each second a quiet confirmation of his powerlessness.
It was the Awakening Ceremony all over again. But this ti, the system wasn’t just ignoring him. It was actively toying with him.
The tir hit zero.
The blue screen flashed again. A stark, simple finality.
`[Quest Failed.]`
For a mont, nothing happened. A flicker of hope ignited in his chest. Maybe the "punishnt protocol" was just a threat.
Then, a new notification appeared. The hope was extinguished.
`[Punishnt Protocol: Activated]`
The air in front of him began to shimr. Like heat haze. A deep, tearing sound filled the alley. Reality being ripped like fabric. A pinprick of blackness appeared. It began to expand. Unstable and violent.
It grew into a shimring, unstable vortex. A swirling portal of pure shadow. It didn’t look like a gateway. It looked like a wound in the world.
Edward took a step back. His hand reached for a weapon that wasn’t there. His newfound power felt utterly aningless.
The system, his silent, cruel new master, delivered its verdict. The ssage filled his vision. Cold, absolute, and utterly terrifying.
`[Punishnt: Survive the Howling Abyss for 3 hours.]`
`[Failure to enter within 10 seconds will result in soul-disintegration.]`
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